Dancing with my sadness

Today, someone very special asked me two questions that made me uncomfortable at first: “What is depression to you?” and “how do you want to relate to your sadness?” Then they said something even stranger: that I should go out and dance with it, talk with it, try to get to know it.

The invitation threw me because my life isn’t only sad. I have health, a daughter I love, my parents alive, a job I enjoy, projects that matter to me, abilities, faith and people to talk to. There is progress. Good things have happened. So why, in spite of all that, do I still feel sad sometimes?

I don’t know whether what I feel could be called depression. A reflection or a conversation doesn’t settle that. What I can do is look at my sadness honestly, without diagnosing it, denying it, or being ashamed of it.

And as I got closer, I discovered that maybe I wasn’t facing just one sadness.

It’s always a penny short of the dollar

There’s a logic that has stayed with me for a long time: nothing is enough for very long.

If I do something well at work, I think it was the least I was hired for. If I help someone, it was the least I could do. If I reach a goal, a better one immediately appears. If someone recognizes me, part of me enjoys being seen, but another part gets uncomfortable, feels embarrassed, or thinks I don’t deserve it.

I never celebrate too much. Sometimes I don’t even let others celebrate me.

For years I read that dissatisfaction as a virtue: the pursuit of excellence, healthy ambition, the wish to do things better and better. And it has certainly let me build, learn and move forward. But it also has a trap: if the standard moves at the very moment I reach it, I can never experience arriving. It’s always a penny short of making the dollar.

Excellence says: “This is valuable and it can still grow.”

Insufficiency says: “Since it can still grow, this isn’t worth anything yet.”

From the outside they can produce similar behavior. On the inside they build completely different lives.

When achieving was the price of being enough

I learned very early that to be accepted, valued and enough, I had to achieve extraordinary things. I was expected to be the best student, the best worker, the best son, the best friend, the best brother. Being good seemed like only the starting point.

When you learn that love or acceptance depends on performance, achievement stops being a reason to celebrate and becomes a requirement. It doesn’t produce lasting satisfaction; it only grants temporary relief. You don’t think “how wonderful that I got it,” but “thank goodness I delivered; now I have to prove I can keep it up and then do something bigger.”

That way, even a life full of progress can feel incomplete.

Not necessarily because good things are missing, but because the mind doesn’t give them enough time to become part of the picture you have of yourself. Every success gets logged as an obligation met; every mistake, on the other hand, stays on as evidence of not being enough.

Maybe part of my sadness is the tiredness of having spent so many years trying to earn something that should never have depended on a result: the certainty that I am enough and worthy of love even when I’m not achieving anything extraordinary.

There are real reasons to be sad, too

It would be too easy to turn everything into a childhood story or a mindset problem. My sadness also has concrete reasons.

There’s a financial pressure that has worn me out for a long time: good income and assets, but also debts and responsibilities that limit my freedom. There’s a legal and emotional closure that has dragged on longer than I’d like. There’s loneliness. I’ve learned to live in it and, at times, even to enjoy it, but I still want to love, to be loved, to talk, to share life and to receive tenderness.

I can have faith that things will get better and, at the same time, feel afraid of tomorrow’s obligations. I can recognize progress and know the problem isn’t solved yet. I can learn to be alone without pretending I no longer want company.

Progress isn’t the same as resolution.

That’s why my sadness isn’t necessarily proof of ingratitude or spiritual failure. Sometimes it’s simply a response to a hard reality. There is something I miss, something I’m enduring, and something I’m afraid I won’t reach. Past, present and future can weigh on me all at once.

When silence lets in what’s pending

I’ve noticed that sadness shows up more strongly when activity drops. On days of intense work, or when I’m at the farm, structure and action fill my mind. When I stop, the memories come, the accounts, the postponed projects and the questions about the future.

That doesn’t necessarily mean being busy is bad. Working, creating and acting are part of me. But activity can serve two very different functions: it can build a life, or it can keep us from feeling it.

Silence doesn’t always create the sadness. Sometimes it just lets me hear the one that was already waiting.

When it comes, I’ve reacted in many ways. Sometimes I overthink and end up more tired. Other times I exercise, walk, run, read, study, go out to eat, pray the rosary, or look for a conversation. Sometimes I write it down and try to understand it; other times I play dumb and hide it.

I’ve learned that distracting myself can give me a rest, but it doesn’t replace working it through. If I don’t get what I feel out, it usually comes back. Talking with that special person, writing, or talking with a trusted friend helps because the emotion leaves my head and takes shape. Another person can show me truths my sadness had left out of the frame.

It’s not about digging around forever. Sadness needs to be listened to, but not questioned until exhaustion. When the reflection stops producing understanding and starts repeating the same question, I’m no longer working it through: I’m ruminating.

Listen, translate and act

A simple tool has helped me not get stuck. I write the situation inside a box and, around it, I draw circles. Each circle holds an action.

The box keeps the problem from taking over the whole page. The circles remind me that, even if I don’t control the complete solution, there are still possible moves.

First I understand the emotion. Then I try to name the reality. Then I translate what I understood into actions. Action lowers my anxiety because it gives me agency back: collecting a debt, putting an account in order, having a conversation, asking for help, setting a limit, working on what I’ve already chosen, or simply taking care of my body while an answer arrives.

Still, not every sadness calls for a new action. Some show up when I’ve already done my part and I still have to get through a time I don’t control. In those cases, going on producing solutions can be another form of anxiety. Maybe the task is not to put my whole life on hold while that gets resolved.

And not every sadness has to turn me into an improved version of myself. If I demand that pain always produce learning, progress or productivity, I’m repeating the same logic that has worn me out: even suffering would have to perform.

Some sadnesses transform. Others are only accompanied. Some get resolved. Others need time.

Giving thanks without silencing the pain

There are four words I try to keep in mind so I can live in what I’ve come to call a beautiful state: to give thanks, to celebrate, to honor and to marvel.

I give thanks for being alive, for having health, for walking, seeing, hearing and thinking. I celebrate my daughter, the work I enjoy, and the abilities I’ve been able to develop. I honor my parents, the people I’ve loved, and what I learned at every stage. I marvel at nature, at faith, at a conversation, at a cup of coffee, or at the chance to begin again.

But gratitude shouldn’t be used to scold sadness. Telling myself “with so many blessings you shouldn’t feel this way” isn’t gratitude: it’s shame dressed up as spirituality.

Healthy gratitude doesn’t push pain out; it widens the frame.

I can say: “Today it hurts to be alone,” and also “today I’m deeply grateful for my daughter.” I can feel anguish about my finances and celebrate the work I have. Neither of those truths needs to erase the other.

Being well doesn’t mean always being happy. It means being able to honestly live in what I feel without losing sight of the full value of my life.

The invitation to dance

Now I understand that invitation a little better.

Dancing with my sadness doesn’t mean romanticizing it, letting myself fall into it, or allowing it to direct all the music. It doesn’t mean putting a smile on top and pretending it doesn’t exist, either. It means receiving it when it comes, asking it what it’s pointing to, and deciding consciously what to do with its message.

When it comes back, I don’t want to let myself fall or to hide it. I want to feel it. To listen to it so I can understand which part belongs to reality, which part to my fears, and which part to that old belief that I’m still not enough. Then I can act on what depends on me, ask for perspective when I need it, and patiently keep company with what I still can’t transform.

Maybe that’s what dancing is: not standing frozen in front of sadness, but not dragging it along to our rhythm either. Listening for a moment to the music it brings, moving with it, and remembering that no song lasts forever.

My sadness tells a truth, but it doesn’t tell my whole story.

In my story there is also love, progress, faith, abilities, gratitude, beauty and future. There are still hard things. There are still things I want and don’t have. There will still be days when an achievement seems not enough and an absence takes up too much room.

But I can learn to tell myself something different:

This hurts and my life is still valuable.

This isn’t resolved yet and I’m not stuck.

I can want to grow without denying how much I’ve grown.

I can aspire to more without treating the present as if it were worth nothing.

And I can be sad without becoming my sadness.